I never understood this logic in all honesty. Can someone explain?

I don't understand how in the lore, characters that die once (i.e Gul'dan) stay dead and are only brought back to life through some extensive magic or rituals. Even the characters that do die and come back usually return as various unearthly creatures like Death Knights, Liches, and every other undead race. So how is it in the game player characters have died over an incalculable amount of times and returned to life not only in perfect health, but also through merely interacting with their corpse as a spirit alone without aid? Not only does this break logical consistency because the question is raised of why characters like Grom didn't just run up to their corpses to come back to life, but there's also no sign of degeneration. In the game Dark Souls for example, the more you die, the weaker your character gets along with becoming more and more of a decrepit, undead creature, with the only way of regaining your health is through various items and conditions.

What do you think of this in retrospect? Do you think it should be tweaked?

Lorewise your character never dies. Player resurrection is just a gameplay solution, but in the lore our heroes always succeed on the first try in a raid, or they don't die in arena but are merely left wounded.

Mostly because of plot armor. There's several situations in the lore where ressurection is shown to be possible. Of course, it's not a situation of just "Oh just get a priest/paladin/shaman/druid/monk in here, or someone who has a high level guild so we can res." It's a very taxing process, only done by the most skillful of certain faiths, and only done upon the most important characters. And even then, it still takes quite some time.

But yeah. Really there's no reason ressurection COULDN'T be done, just that it's a very long and taxing process so it's not done for every poor sod who gets an axe to the face.

For player characters, it wouldn't make sense in an MMO to be weaker the next time you fight a boss. You already wiped, likely due to being too weak to kill the boss; Now you're going to be WEAKER the next time you fight it?

Last edited by Fleugen; 2014-04-19 at 02:44 PM.

Originally Posted by Endus

If a building's about to collapse, you can debate whether it's better to demolish it or repair it, and you can make political-agenda arguments either way. Disputing gravity itself to claim it won't fall down is not a political position, it's just ignorance.

Lorewise your character never dies. Player resurrection is just a gameplay solution, but in the lore our heroes always succeed on the first try in a raid, or they don't die in arena but are merely left wounded.

Not true. Lorewise, we literally die against the Lich King and get a mass rez from the paladin that waiting 10-15 mins before remembering to use his bubble.

I would think, someone like Gul'dan, would have a hard time being rez'd now, considering his skull is not with the rest of his skeleton

One must remember that WoW was developed to be less hardcore than other MMOs at the time (virtually no death penalty in comparison) and gameplay trumps lore, as they've stated many times ... so if you are someone who dies a lot, as Shedi said, lorewise you haven't died nearly as much, you very rarely die as far as the lore is concerned. Just like, lorewise, you aren't killing those raid bosses every week for years; they die once. When you wipe on them, however many times, those wipes don't exist in lore; only the single defeat exists (even that doesn't always exist; such as Varian killing Onyxia lorewise iirc).

Lorewise your character never dies. Player resurrection is just a gameplay solution, but in the lore our heroes always succeed on the first try in a raid, or they don't die in arena but are merely left wounded.

It's still pretty sketchy given all the things an active WoW character does.

They've always intentionally skirted it in the past but there is a vague story reason to it. Spirit Healers are strange and powerful beings of destiny that somehow guide our spirits back to our broken bodies and mend the bodies before returning our spirits to them. But as most people have stated it's really just a game mechanic. True rezzing is extremely rare, if not unheard of, in Lore with flawed attempts being more common (Undead etc.) and even that is usually extremely difficult. It took the entire Sunwell to bring back Kel'Thuzad.

WoW wouldn't be very fun it it forced you to make a new character every time you die and something like what Dark Souls has would not work very well in WoW nor would it be fun. To answer your question, it's a game that's why. Real life logic has no place in video games.

Last edited by Geminiwolf; 2014-04-19 at 02:55 PM.

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They've always intentionally skirted it in the past but there is a vague story reason to it. Spirit Healers are strange and powerful beings of destiny that somehow guide our spirits back to our broken bodies and mend the bodies before returning our spirits to them. But as most people have stated it's really just a game mechanic. True rezzing is extremely rare, if not unheard of, in Lore with flawed attempts being more common (Undead etc.) and even that is usually extremely difficult. It took the entire Sunwell to bring back Kel'Thuzad.

It's still pretty sketchy given all the things an active WoW character does.

Gameplay and story segregation. In-lore, a bunch of us die in every raid and we stay dead. Those of us who survive have gotten the attention of our faction leaders and military top brass for a reason, and because of that, we're considered elite problem-solvers. And given that we're in the suicide mission to close the Dark Portal, it seems like we're the go-to guy for just about any major problem our faction faces nowadays, since we have this track record of being either too skilled or too stubborn to keel over and die when everyone else is dropping like flies.

We are, in short, WoW's equivalent to Commander Shepard. An elite unit with a lot of freedom in how we execute our orders from on high (kept vague to give us even more freedom in how to execute them), we basically hobknob with the most influential people on the planet, and we can be as morally horrific as we please, we still get a pass on it because we're integral to the war effort(s).

So, as to why we're able to die and be revived so often, in-lore we haven't died at all. We've beaten the odds (and the odds increase all the time) save for a few quests that require your death, which are usually solved within the quest proper by someone powerful enough to revive you once you're done gallivanting in the spirit world.

Ressurection is definitely possible within the confines of the lore, its just that in most cases it takes more than a 10 second channel. Sylvanas was rezzed, but it took a Valkyrie sacrifice.

My biggest confusion comes from the apparant lack of healing in the lore. People get injured and crippled all the time, despite the existance of magic that physically fixes the injured. Example, Taran Zhu can be impaled on Gorehowl and walk away from it, Varians wife gets hit in the year by a rock in Stormwind, home of every priest fucking ever, and she dies.

Thinking about things like this will just give you a headache. I just separate it into either gameplay or lore. Lots of things in WoW do not make sense lorewise, but do from a gameplay perspective, so you just kinda have to accept it.

Gameplay and story segregation. In-lore, a bunch of us die in every raid and we stay dead. Those of us who survive have gotten the attention of our faction leaders and military top brass for a reason, and because of that, we're considered elite problem-solvers. And given that we're in the suicide mission to close the Dark Portal, it seems like we're the go-to guy for just about any major problem our faction faces nowadays, since we have this track record of being either too skilled or too stubborn to keel over and die when everyone else is dropping like flies.

We are, in short, WoW's equivalent to Commander Shepard. An elite unit with a lot of freedom in how we execute our orders from on high (kept vague to give us even more freedom in how to execute them), we basically hobknob with the most influential people on the planet, and we can be as morally horrific as we please, we still get a pass on it because we're integral to the war effort(s).

So, as to why we're able to die and be revived so often, in-lore we haven't died at all. We've beaten the odds (and the odds increase all the time) save for a few quests that require your death, which are usually solved within the quest proper by someone powerful enough to revive you once you're done gallivanting in the spirit world.

This is probably the best explanation of a player character's role in the lore that I have seen on these forums so far, kudos for that.

Gameplay and story segregation. In-lore, a bunch of us die in every raid and we stay dead. Those of us who survive have gotten the attention of our faction leaders and military top brass for a reason, and because of that, we're considered elite problem-solvers. And given that we're in the suicide mission to close the Dark Portal, it seems like we're the go-to guy for just about any major problem our faction faces nowadays, since we have this track record of being either too skilled or too stubborn to keel over and die when everyone else is dropping like flies.

We are, in short, WoW's equivalent to Commander Shepard. An elite unit with a lot of freedom in how we execute our orders from on high (kept vague to give us even more freedom in how to execute them), we basically hobknob with the most influential people on the planet, and we can be as morally horrific as we please, we still get a pass on it because we're integral to the war effort(s).

So, as to why we're able to die and be revived so often, in-lore we haven't died at all. We've beaten the odds (and the odds increase all the time) save for a few quests that require your death, which are usually solved within the quest proper by someone powerful enough to revive you once you're done gallivanting in the spirit world.

This is one way to look at it, but another way is just as simply understood:

Yes, we go in and we experience the raids. But lore-wise, we were never there. When you look at a 10 man raid, and you consider the odds of a 10 man raid accomplishing what an entire army of people is not able to do, it just doesn't make sense that 10 people can do it. BUT, if you take away the 10 person aspect, you suddenly have thousands of people all in the same place fighting the same boss. And relatively, only few of them succeed each given time.

In lore, there are always many, MANY more soldiers than the 10 people in your raid attacking each boss/trash mob. Most of them do not make it out of the raid alive, and they are NPCs, so they are not shown in most cases. (There are some like Galakras and (to a lesser extent) Iron Juggernaught where the NPCs are actually shown.) You have to use your imagination a bit.

This is shown very clearly by the existance of the members of the Black Harvest, in the Warlock Green Fire quest chain. You're handed a book written by one of the members, and in it, it describes the backstory of the members of the Black Harvest. One was present at the death of Illidan; Another fought tooth and nail against the Lich King; Yet another had their spirit completely shattered in the fight against Deathwing. These NPCs were nowhere to be seen during these fights, yet they were present and active in the fights. Lorewise, a completely separate set of people than your characters are the true heroes who defeated the main bosses. Your characters were simply footsoldiers who either would have died lorewise, or survived and were hailed as a hero.

Point being, lorewise your character doesn't really exist. Yes, quests treat you as a god amongst men because you survived just about everything, but quests are catered to the situation; You'll notice that most decisions are already made long before we're even told things are going down. This is because we're really not that important to major lore characters. We're soldiers. MAYBE a little better known soldiers than most, but definitely not palling around with Thrall and Varian.

Originally Posted by Endus

If a building's about to collapse, you can debate whether it's better to demolish it or repair it, and you can make political-agenda arguments either way. Disputing gravity itself to claim it won't fall down is not a political position, it's just ignorance.

Im pretty sure the Lich King is the only one to truly kill "Azeroths mightiest heroes" and our Resurrection did occur very quickly by Terenas Menethil. The way I see it is that we (the characters) are "special" types of soldiers with the ability to be resurrected repeatedly and resurrect each other but we would never be able to resurrect beings with the power of an Old God or Algalon or Kil'Jaeden etc.

Do I think it should be tweaked ? hell to the no, if people got weaker every time they died then PVP would seize to exist, people would be too scared to go into raids and I bet a lot would lose motivation to keep playing if they had to do some stupid grind just to get their normal stats back.

Lorewise your character never dies. Player resurrection is just a gameplay solution, but in the lore our heroes always succeed on the first try in a raid, or they don't die in arena but are merely left wounded.

This is the reason.

Gameplay is more important than Lore, that's been said loads of times before.

Also keep in mind that according to lore, your character either doesn't exist at all or is "Generic Stand-in Adventure 23-c" and that's about it. We've got canon appearances of characters in raids that certainly weren't in your party but according to the lore they were.

One such example is there was a Worgen named Zinnin who was involved in defeating Deathwing. We didn't see him there with Thrall and the others meaning that he was in the "raid" that kept Madness distracted long enough for the Aspects to defeat him. Canonically, if you were in that raid, on that boss, Zinnin was with you.

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